Pepperell FinCom reviews fiscal '14 budget

PEPPERELL -- With just over a month before Town Meeting, the Finance Committee is almost finished with its review of individual departmental budgets.

The committee is formulating the town's fiscal 2014 budget, for which it has instructed department heads to level-fund their own individual budgets.

Members will try to hold the line on spending next year, allowing an increase only to cover such fixed costs as negotiated employee salaries, utilities and insurance.

With only one more meeting, the committee met Thursday with heads of the library, Council on Aging, Recreation Department and the town clerk.

First up was Council on Aging Director Marcia Zaniboni who said that though her budget, at $173,026, would remain fairly stable in the coming year, she would like to establish a pair of new revolving accounts that would make some programs self-sufficient and not dependent on the ups and downs of municipal spending.

Zaniboni's first article would seek to set up a revolving account that would cover the cost of a part-time kitchen manager at the senior center as well as food for meals served there. The account would be funded through a grant and money raised from what the Senior Center charges for its affordable meals.

Zaniboni told the committee she expected the number of seniors that the Council on Aging services to double over the next 10 years and that it was better to lay the groundwork now to deal with that growth.

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Members were concerned that the kitchen-manager job created, with the help of a one-time grant, would later become a permanent one supported by the taxpayers but Zaniboni said she expected the revolving-account funds to be able to cover it.

A second account proposed by Zaniboni would ask residents to appropriate $5,000 to cover the Council on Aging's share of the cost of a roadrunner van to be provided by the Lowell Regional Transit Authority.

The van would be used to transport seniors around Pepperell as well as out of town for such things as doctor's appointments. The van would free the town from having to rely on LRTA. The rest of the money would be provided by an LRTA grant.

The committee also met with Library Director Deborah Spratt, who submitted a pair of proposed budgets, one that showed no increase in spending from 2013 at $439,603 and another with a 5 percent increase for a $459,850 bottom line.

According to Spratt, the higher figure may be needed if the state certification board declines to give the town a waiver from its minimum spending requirements. If the lower figure is chosen by the town, it would represent a shortfall of $20,247 from the figure needed for certification.

Even a suggested increase of 1 percent would yield only another $5,000 or so, not enough to satisfy the state.

"I don't have any fudge room anywhere," said Spratt of her budget. "It is what it is."

In addition, the library will seek a separate capital-spending warrant article for $30,250 to pay for replacement of its 28-year-old roof, which has required annual patch-up jobs to prevent leaking.

Should that measure fail, a second article would seek $5,000 to at repair the existing roof. This article would be removed from the warrant should the replacement measure pass.

A third article sponsored by the library would ask residents for the appropriation of $3,564 for the purchase of books and other library supplies.

"I'm grateful for your funding," said Spratt of what the town gives in support of the library. "We're doing our best."

With one more session remaining, members are expected to continue discussion of their findings before settling on a recommended bottom line for fiscal 2014 some time over the next several weeks.

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